


All I Want

by Jenni_Snake



Series: Imagine Sisyphus Happy [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Dealing With Trauma, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), M/M, Relationship(s), Surviving Child Abuse, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:05:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenni_Snake/pseuds/Jenni_Snake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world invaded by monsters, Newton has to deal with the monsters from his past.</p><p>(The tags are meant as trigger warnings for dealing with difficult subjects. Please be aware.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS of child sexual abuse. PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS.
> 
> I have attempted to work in most of the canon timeline, though chapter ten was based on what might have been an error in my reference material: I have left it in because I liked the effect. Also, I have played fast and loose with the movie script, so please be aware that there will be inconsistencies.
> 
> For **translations of foreign words and phrases** , you can either [hover over foreign underlined phrases](try%20it%20here) or see the list in the [Appendix](http://archiveofourown.org/works/956352) (which is posted as a separate work). (*Please do not click on underlined translations, they are false links.) Thanks to one of my commenters for helping with fixes!
> 
> *this story is complete, Chapter 14 does not exist, it was formerly the Appendix (TO ANYONE WHO LEFT ME A COMMENT PREVIOUSLY AT THE END OF THE STORY I AM SO SORRY! Those comments were deleted when I made that chapter a separate appendix! I loved them, and remember them in spirit, and thank you so much for them! AO3 admin regrets to inform me that they are gone forever, but they live on in my heart. <3)

Their arrival in Hong Kong on the last, wet day of December didn’t start off as inconspicuously as Newton would have liked. Besides having been made to look like a fool in front of an engineer, a former Jaeger pilot, and the ‘dome Marshal himself, Hermann had just beat his idea into the ground in front of him, all while treading into territory that they had already agreed was off limits in their arguments. Without an ounce of regret, Newton lobbed a sticky slice of intestine which stuck to the chalkboard right above where Hermann was scribbling, and left the lab without even washing his hands.

Hours later, Newton slunk back, balancing a tray of food that he had scrounged up from the long-closed mess on each hand. The smell of kaiju guts hit him before he acclimatized again, and he wondered, just for a fraction of a second, how on Earth he, let alone Hermann, put up with it.

Even in the other Shatterdomes, the research teams had usually avoided eating in the mess hall. Now that their team was reduced to two, Newton didn’t see the point of trekking all the way there to sit awkwardly with his shirt cuffs rolled down and Hermann wordlessly calling him a kaiju groupie.

Hooking his foot around a chair, he plopped down, spun around, and pushed himself to slide up in front of Hermann.

“ _[Mayn her](Sir%20\(Yid.\)),_ ” he said deferentially, proffering a tray to him. Hermann opened his mouth, then just smiled as he sat himself down with some difficulty, took his fork, and started eating.

Picking up his chopsticks, Newton smirked, embarrassed, and started to shovel food into his mouth. It seemed like a new record to have already had a fight. But, just like Newton no longer called Hermann out on being _hangry_ (“That’s not even a word!” “You’re right - it’s two. In one. Ingenious, really, if you think about the linguistics behind it...”), Hermann, in turn, no longer said anything when Newt slipped into Yiddish.

They used to fight in German, partly so the rest of their team didn’t understand them, and partly because it came naturally. Whenever he was losing an argument, without realizing it, Newton would start to slip in more and more Hebrew until Hermann could barely understand him, at which point he would yell:

“ _[Warum sprichst du kein richtiges Deutsch?!](Why%20don't%20you%20speak%20proper%20German?!)_ ”

And Newton would stop immediately, and Hermann would win. It took a few arguments for Hermann to realize he wasn’t actually winning. The very last time they had argued in German, instead of finding Newton stewing and muttering about how he was right after all, he found him standing over his specimens, staring into nothing, drained. Newt had tried to hide a sniffle by wiping his nose with the top of his sleeve and continuing to work, but Hermann had turned away, abashed. Neither of them had talked about it, but Newton was grateful that, ever since, they had argued English.

Exhausted from the trip and their altercations, they ate in silence, knees just touching, neither of them noticing that it was already New Year’s Day.

 


	2. Chapter 2

In 1995, Silicon Valley was the place for tech-savvy musicians to be, or so his uncle had kept telling his parents until they pulled up their roots in Berlin and headed for California. Newton had been transfixed by the space, the houses that were so far away from each other, how the hills were brown but the lawns were bright green.

And the ocean. From the backyard of their Watsonville home, if he climbed up the first rung on the fence, he could see the grey ocean stretch away to the horizon. At night, the lights of the city ran down the hill and stopped abruptly, swallowed up by the large, dark expanse.

The best part of moving had been getting to live so close to his uncle, whom he had only ever known as a voice on the other end of the phone speaking to him in a mixture of German and English, even if he didn’t understand. In California, he was a tall man with soft, blond hair and squarish glasses who looked a little bit like his father, but rounder. He was also the only person who spoke to him in English at home. His uncle had always scoffed at his sister-in-law for teaching Newton a useless language like Yiddish, claiming that she was going to confuse the boy, who, aside from speaking German with his father, should stick to learning English. His mother reminded him that if his half-baked amateur linguistics were as good as he thought they were, then Altavista would have poached him from EA instead, and that he could just _[farmach dos moyl](shut%20up%20\(Yid.\)%20lit.%20shut%20your%20mouth)_ and enjoy programming hardware for his _[shpilele](little%20games)_. Just because he had hated his own father for ramming another language down his throat, it was no reason to not give her son an advantage in life. Just to annoy her brother-in-law, his mother always called him _[feter](uncle%20\(Yid.\))_ Günter, and he’d correct her to _[onk’l](uncle%20\(Yid.\))_ on instinct, then catch himself and insist he was _[Onkel Günter](Uncle%20\(Germ.\))_ , and finally Uncle Gunther. Newt just took to calling him Gunnar, like his father had since they were kids, and no one seemed to mind.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn’t until the completion of the Tokyo Shatterdome that the PPDC decided to bring the various arms of its K-Science team together at one station, even though the scientists themselves had been griping for months that it would only make sense. The physicists were happy to have an uninterrupted flow of information from the breach, due in part to the more advanced technology that the Hong Kong ‘dome had lacked. The geologists were happy to have more complete access to all records on the Challenger Deep, too. It was unspoken that no one wanted to be that close to the breach, but, from a scientific standpoint, it was only logical. None of the teams, however, appreciated the evolutionary biologists who only half-jokingly said that it would be easiest for a kaiju to make landfall in Tokyo.

Newton had never really been comfortable being his team’s lead, and it was even worse now that he was the liaison with the other team leaders, making him unpopular with them because they hated his ideas, and with his own colleagues, because their voice never seemed to be heard at meetings. They did, grudgingly, admit that it wasn’t so much Newton’s fault as it was the fault of the other departments, and that no one wanted to deal with what everyone outside of the biology department thought was the most ridiculously dangerous of the investigative realms, and only the biologists thought was, therefore, the most interesting.

Most other leads were happy when ‘Doctor Geiszler’ shut down and shut up, but after their fourth or fifth meeting, he was approached by the hobbling Doctor Gottlieb, who had introduced himself to the group at their first meeting as the youngest and most sociable of his department. Newton’s eyes had gone wide, and he blinked, swearing to himself never to wander into the physics lab for fear of finding Tolkeinesque wraiths scrawling with bone-and-paper hands on ancient chalkboards. He tried to play it cool, and forced his most jovial self at Gottlieb, who switched hands to lean on his cane with his left, and stretched out his right stiffly. Newton was surprised by the strength in his handshake.

“Gottlieb,” he introduced himself, “Hermann. Don’t call me that.”

During the next few meetings, he swore he caught Doctor Gottlieb smirking in his direction at some comment or other that he had guessed, correctly, would be amusing to the biology team, but looked away casually whenever Newton tried to meet his gaze.

It wasn’t until the first meeting in March that Hermann had surprised him out of doodling over Tresspasser’s tattooed teeth by asking him a question.

“What do _you_ think, Doctor Geiszler?”

Newton’s mouth hung open for a moment, as he wished that no one had been paying attention to what he had been doing, and slowly raised his pen to his mouth, flipping his arm over. He hoped the look of consternation that had crept onto his face somehow passed as pensive, since his heart was racing and he could feel himself blushing.

“About the effect of salinated dihydrogen monoxide-diluted ammonia on kaiju lung function?” Hermann prompted, throwing him a lifeline with a smirk.

And that was when their back-and-forth had devolved into their first argument. In front of everyone. In German.

All in all, it went pretty well.


	4. Chapter 4

School started out fine for Newton, more than fine after he began to speak about halfway through kindergarten, and his teachers removed his ESL coding by the first grade. It was then that he really took off, and he had been skipped ahead from third grade into fourth, even if fifth wouldn’t even have been a challenge for him, but he was already the smallest student his own age, anyway.

If he really thought about it, and he never liked to think about it, it was just about the same time he had won the San Jose Citywide Science Fair in his age category (though he had overheard the judges joking that if the other kids wouldn’t have beat him up, they would have given him the junior high prize instead). His parents proudly bought him a lifetime subscription to _Scientific American_ , and he had got his photo in the paper. Being more of an engineer than a biologist, his uncle had decided that, even though his project had been an investigation on salamander limb regeneration, a tamagotchi would be an appropriate gift.

He sat on the edge of Newton’s bed, his babysitter for the night while his parents were out celebrating their anniversary (the only occasion he refused to get them a card for), shrugging as Newton got the wrapping paper off and raised his eyebrows at the toy.

“You can take it apart or take care of it, whatever you like,” his uncle told him.

“Thank you, Gunnar,” Newton said, giving him a hug.

“Everyone needs to be cared for,” he cooed, stroking his hair and holding him long enough that Newton became uncomfortable. “ _[Jeder sollte jemanden haben, um den er sich kümmern kann.](I%20just%20want%20to%20take%20care%20of%20you.)_ ” When his uncle's hand slid down his back and under the waist of his pants, he closed his eyes.

It wasn’t much later that his uncle switched off the light and closed the door with a _[Gute Nacht](good%20night)_ , as if nothing had happened. Newton clenched his new toy in his hand harder and harder until he heard the front door open and close and his parents’ voices in the hallway, and the plastic screen cracked, cutting open a long slice on his thumb that he sucked until he fell asleep.

*

It wasn't something he thought about often. It wasn't something he wanted to think about, ever. It was just something that happened. Often, not often, he didn't know, and he didn't want to find out. It was a secret he kept, not knowing who he was protecting.


	5. Chapter 5

Nobody thought that being a PPDC biologist was a glamourous job. Except the biologists. Particularly Newton. He would tell people, especially when he would FaceTime with his mother, how cool it was to see the newest specimens _([myan doktorkl!](my%20little%20doctor!%20\(Yid.\)))_ , and the cities, or, well, what was left of them _([zikhroyne-livrokhe](May%20they%20rest%20in%20peace.%20\(Yid\)))_ , but the food, he could go on and on about the food and she would in turn tease him that he was eating too much, or not enough, or just eating too many strange things with tentacles.

He wouldn’t tell people that moving from Shatterdome to Shatterdome and back again, sometimes after six months, sometimes after a year, depending on where the kaiju went, gave him the opportunity not to have to get to know people, to not to have to settle in, not to acquire anything except more and more ink (which he never, ever told his mother about, and made sure to roll down his sleeves and do up his collar for every conversation, and sent up a small prayer before they spoke that she wouldn't find out).

Still, even if he hadn’t been that close with his team, he missed the company and started eating in the mess, and started to feel worse because he ate alone, lost amongst the crowd, sleeves rolled down after he had gotten glares from the Jaeger pilots and others who had probably lost friends and family in attacks, too. He started to doubt the sanity of trying to eat among people, until the day he arrived in the mess early for lunch, having forgotten to eat breakfast that morning or dinner the night before. The empty table he had chosen quickly started to fill up with Jaeger engineers who introduced themselves and let him be part of their conversations, and were actually interested in the kaiju. They had even smiled when they had recognized his name, noting that he was 'that little doctor guy' whose reports they read every so often. They talked amongst themselves, and with him, about their projects, and their days and about the neuroscience of drifting and the engineering of a pons and the human biological capacity to share a neural link. And sometimes at least one or two of them got transferred by coincidence with him to the next ‘dome when the next attack was predicted to hit, and at the very least he had people around him who he could talk to, but never really had to get to know.

The only other people he got used to were the handful of Marshals and commanders, and the various K-Sci department heads he ran into at their once again respective ‘domes. The other scientists were polite enough in person, but he was thankful that their bi-weekly meetups were done over e-mail now, since he found it much easier to type his diatribes without interruption. It took him a while to realize that the arguments usually devolved into him and Doctor Gottleib sending messages back and forth to each other, one of them having forgotten, after their heated typing, to hit the ‘Reply All’ button. Which was fortunate for them, since their arguments usually devolved into how many German insults Newton could deflect by calling his opponent Hermann until he cracked. Newton smiled at the computer screen every time he won an argument.

In May 2020, it was back to Tokyo from Anchorage. Every time he flew into another city, he’d imagine what it would look like with unintended paths carved recklessly through it, like the difference between San Francisco when he had left for his first year at MIT, and then when he had been among the first to witness the kaiju-inflicted destruction from the air. He had tried not to stare, and not to think, and not to giggle maniacally as incomprehensible sensations washed over him, and had just turned his music up and closed his eyes instead. He’d never seen Tokyo before Onibaba, but his eyes could trace the scars that, four years on, were still being stitched back together.

He hadn’t expected a welcome beyond the ‘dome ops manager letting him know that the samples from Ho Chi Minh wouldn’t start showing up until the next day because they had been expecting him in Hong Kong, but escorted him to his room and then to his lab, and he was happy not having to deal with either pomp or circumstance. It gave him a chance to pour over old data on his holoscreen for the rest of the evening, tapping his foot to the music that blared through his earbuds and and occasionally choking on a mouthful of month-old matzo crackers he’d found in a box in his bag, which tasted the same as the day he had opened them.

So he nearly jumped out of his skin when Hermann materialized out of thin air next to his chair.

“I knocked,” he stated, as Newton scrambled to turn off his music, everything but the gleam in Hermann’s eye indicating that he was ignoring his surprise, “I suppose you were too absorbed to hear.”

Newton rubbed his eyes under his glasses and tried to formulate an apology through a yawn.

“I was wondering if you had anything useful from your time in Alaska,” Hermann said, without apparently caring that Newton wasn’t a part of the conversation, and interrupting him just as he opened his mouth.

“And I see you don’t disappoint. That,” he said, pointing at the parka slung over the back of Newton’s chair with his cane. Newton passed it to him with a mental shrug, wondering how on Earth anyone could be cold in Southeast Asia in May.

“It’s a bit large, but it will do. _[Danke](Thank%20you.%20\(Germ.\))_.”

And before Newton could add even the most polite of inanities or scathing of remarks, Hermann cut him off again.

“You should clean those up,” he suggested, though it was phrased more like a command, waving his cane at the box of crackers Newton had spilled in his surprise, before pivoting and limping from the room.

“Thanks,” Newton yelled at his retreating figure. “Nice seeing you again, too!”

Starting the next day, kaiju specimens started trickling in to the lab. Newton swore he would never tell anyone, but there was something sensual about digging into the glop of animal remains. He tried to not even think it, just in case anyone was around who could read his thoughts.

Also starting the next day, as if to try to save imaginary paper, or maybe cut down on electricity, Hermann stopped sending Newton e-mails. Newton took it as something of a blessing... until later that afternoon, when Hermann showed up to share whatever was on his mind.

And it happened the next day. And the day after. And the day after that, until it became so regular of an occurrence that Newton started taking his coffee breaks around the same time each day, then started pouring a cup of coffee for Hermann, too, and then started to really look forward to his visits. Through their time spent together, Newton found that Hermann wasn’t just the cantankerous bastard that stalked the hallways, but that he had a wry sense of humour, and smiled more than most people thought, and was enthusiastic about collecting ancient Roman coins and shy about liking spy novels, and had studied in Berlin and lectured at Cambridge. And it took Newton quite a while to readjust his perception when he found that they were contemporaries, but Hermann had dismissed it with a wave of his hand and a dispassionate explanation that he suffered from hip dysplasia, and the surgeries hadn’t quite caught everything but ibuprofen made up for the rest, and he would still rather be standing than sitting. Newton chose not to say anything about his fashion sense. And Newton started to notice Hermann’s eyes and how the corners creased just ever so slightly when he smiled, and how his skin was creamy, not pale, and smooth, and Newton caught himself a few times staring, and as soon as he did he plunged back into his coffee. Without even noticing, he’d shared all the same information with Hermann - about MIT, and how many times he had gone to see Trespasser’s skull when he was in Chicago, and showed him the tattoos he'd had done on his inner wrists, his first set, the second one only three months after the first because it really was addictive, and how he had started learning Japanese to read articles at Berkeley, but ended up using it to read manga instead. Or the time when he was ten and entered a kid’s hot dog eating contest and came in second place and couldn’t get out of bed for the next three days he was so sick, or how he used to try to pet stingrays when he was swimming in the ocean, or how he had watched all twenty-two Godzilla movies at least three times by the time he was seven and got in trouble with his mother for walking around the house screeching and stomping on small buildings he’d made out of popsicle sticks.

It was well into June by the time the kaiju remains had started to run out, and Newton didn’t even have to scrub down before pouring his cup of coffee. He was staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together two sets of data while resting his eyes from the holoscreen. There was something in a DNA sample he had seen, but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that was bothering him. Then, unbidden, another thing that was bothering him popped into his mind: Hermann was late. Newton blushed.

Not five minutes later, as Newton pretended to be staring at his data set, but was really watching the door out of the corner of his eye, Hermann marched in, having finally shed his parka in the muggy weather. According to the unwritten rules of their breaks, it was Newton’s turn for a story or an interesting thought, but, after handing Hermann a cup of coffee, opening his mouth was as far as he got.

“Don’t even start!” Hermann warned, taking the cup and spilling half of it, and then setting it down and mopping at the mess with a handkerchief all the while ranting about the ‘dome Marshal, misuse of funds, resource allocation, losing part of his department, dealing with bureaucracies and paperwork in general, all punctuated with just about every curse word Hermann probably knew, and a few that surprised even Newton.

When it seemed that Hermann had finished, Newton sheepishly offered up, well, _something_ , it had to have been, but thinking back on it he could never remember exactly what it was he had said, shocked as he was by the reaction it produced.

It was then, for the first time since Newton had met him, that the tight line of Hermann’s mouth slowly unfurled, and the sparkle in his eyes beat the sound to his trembling lips. His laugh was as unexpected as it was infectious, and Newton laughed, too, until he had to wipe tears from his eyes and catch his breath to steady himself.

Once they both regained their composure, they stood and sat in a silence that stretched into what Newton considered to be awkwardness. After a full minute, Hermann, any trace that his lips ever held a smile gone, rolled his eyes and let out a huff.

“ _[Verdammt!](Dammit!%20\(Germ.\))_ ” he muttered, grasping Newton by the knot of his tie and half-pulling him out of his seat and into a kiss.

And by the time Newton came back to himself, his lab was empty, and it was already past seven o'clock.


	6. Chapter 6

The day of his bar mitzvah, Newton wiped his mother’s lipstick off his cheek with a grin. He had begged his parents to have his party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, and they had acquiesced. It was only a handful of friends and some of their parents who were there, with his own parents, his Aunt Sylvia who had come from Philadelphia, and his uncle making up the family side.

It was cold and dark by the time everyone left, stuffed with soda and pizza, but it wasn’t until they got home that his uncle gave him his gift. He tried not to cringe at the hand he laid on his back, especially with his parents and his aunt watching, and opened the envelope his uncle handed him. His eyes widened at the crisp twenty dollar bills inside, eighteen of them, and he looked at his uncle, then at his parents.

“ _[Was soll man sagen?](What%20do%20you%20say?)_ ” his father prompted him.

“ _[Vielen Dank](Thank%20you%20very%20much%20\(Germ.\)),_ ” he said, quietly, staring at the card.

“You can spend it, or invest it, or whatever you like,” his uncle told him. “You’re old enough now - it’s your decision.”

And with a squeeze of his shoulder, and some pleasantries to his parents and his other sister, his uncle bid them all goodnight, and left.

Newton sat on his bed until much later, having laid out the bills alphanumerically by serial number in front of him, resisting the violent urge he had to tear them to pieces. At midnight, he put them in the drawer in his nightstand, switched off the light and pulled the covers over his head. He had decided that he would put the money in a bank account, a separate one for only that. And the next time his uncle... spoke German to him (as he’d started calling it, at the same time chastising himself for something so stupid-sounding), he would withdraw every penny in the same denomination and burn it.

And it wasn’t until his fourteenth birthday that he remembered the money and the bank account again, and realised he hadn’t had to touch it. He laid in bed, counting down the seconds until midnight, and, as the red numbers on the clock flicked to twelve, he let out his breath, finally realising he was free, and not caring why.

As he fell asleep, the thought drifted into his head that his bed felt empty, and hated himself for it.

 


	7. Chapter 7

In the place and time and circumstances, it was what could pass for dating. More than their daily chats (which only sometimes turned into arguments, especially after the next kaiju landfall in November), they occasionally left the ‘dome to wander the rain-and-neon soaked Tokyo streets, sometimes to eat in tiny restaurants with too-white walls and too-loud pop music, sometimes to sit at the back of near-empty movie theatres and whisper and hold hands or make out like teenagers because they couldn’t understand what was going on on-screen.

And Newton caught himself grinning at the ceiling goofily in his cot at night after they’d come back to the dim, empty hallways, stolen a last kiss and gone to their separate rooms. And he’d fall asleep agitated over not having pressed Hermann to bring him back to his room, but that would probably be out of the question, or inviting him back to his own, but pulled the covers over his head and forbade himself from ever letting anyone into his bed ever again.

During the day, their work went on. Occasionally their research would overlap, and Hermann would roll the one chalkboard that his team begrudgingly let him take into the biology lab and scribble notes on the weight and size ratio of the kaiju, and they would discuss and debate the dimensions of the breach and how to reconcile its indisputable gravitational pull with its unidirectional passability, or its instability with its refusal to collapse. Whenever they got close to what felt like a breakthrough, they joked about putting themselves out of a job.

They grew into their silences, becoming comfortable around them instead of panicking to fill them up. When they had something to say they would say it; when they didn’t, they merely enjoyed one another’s presence.

Every so often, though, Newton would grow restless and want Hermann to tell him how he got through the day, let alone got out of bed, with the prospect of another twenty-four hours of struggle stretching painfully before him. Newton stored up the question, knowing that, for some reason he tried to ignore, he shouldn’t ask, but needing to hear an answer. When he finally asked, he made it seem like the question had only just popped into his mind, casually, out of the blue, imposing on their silence while he inputted data and Hermann scrawled in chalk and tutted and sighed to himself

“Does it ever stop you from doing things?” Newton asked, not even taking his eyes away from the screen. “I mean, your hip.”

Newton didn’t turn around, but he didn’t have to - Hermann had stopped everything that he was doing, and stood stock-still. Newton, too, stopped typing, sat frozen in his chair, trying not to breathe, kicking himself for thinking he could even ask, wondering what had possessed him.

Without giving so much as a hint of recognition that Newton had even spoken, Hermann started scratching on the board again, and even threw out a question to Newton on retinal distortion under deep water pressure. Newton started breathing again and answered him, glad that he was ignoring his intrusion altogether. Hermann continued to elaborate on his own scientific question, wrote something down on the board, and Newton hurried over when he was pressed for verification. He peered at the numbers and letters, Hermann watching over his shoulder, but was having trouble following the equation when, suddenly, he was spun around and pressed hard up against the board in a forceful kiss. Hermann softened it slowly, rubbing his palms up against Newton’s abdomen, and Newton smiled.

“Does that answer your question?” Hermann asked slyly.

Pushing his glasses up on his nose, Newton nodded: “Yup.”

The colour had risen to Hermann’s cheeks and neck, and his eyes were fluttering, half shut, as he pressed his thumbs deep just beside Newton’s hip bones, licking one of his nipples through his shirt, making Newton stand up on his toes. Newton started breathing deeper and faster, feeling his own heat rise, and moaned.

“Door?” he asked, hoping it would pass for an entire question.

“Locked,” Hermann rasped, kissing and nipping at Newton’s neck.

Newton nearly lost control at Hermann’s seeming impulsiveness, and felt his knees buckle beneath him. He switched their places, pushing Hermann onto the formulae that had already been hopelessly smudged, and while Hermann clutched at the underside of the board, Newton fumbled with his zipper, then, dragging his hands along Hermann's sides, slowly slid down onto his knees in front of him. He took the tip of Hermann’s hardening cock between the bottom of his tongue and his lip, rubbing against his red, wet tip, then slipped his tongue underneath as he took Hermann into his mouth. Hermann clutched the board, arching his back, and Newton moved over his erection with his tongue, and and kissed the end, and sucked hard at just the tip and made Hermann mewl and sigh and whimper without restraint. The sounds Hermann made fed back into Newton’s arousal, and he did all he could to keep Hermann on edge and draw him out and, with a groan, help him reach climax. Trying not to make a mess, he held him in his mouth after he came until Hermann pulled away, reluctantly tucking himself back into his clothing, and Newton wiped his mouth on the roll of his sleeve.

When it came to relationships, Newton was feeling his way in the dark. Even though he was friendly, even outgoing under the right circumstances, he had never been forward and so watched his friends’ college romances from the sidelines, giving excuses that he was too young, and then too busy, and, as time went on and he still found himself alone, not giving excuses at all, just avoiding the conversations altogether.

If Hermann had been in any previous relationships, he chose not to mention it, and treated Newton as if he were, outside of his research, the centre of his universe.

Late one night after, on the cab ride back to the ‘dome after dinner and a movie, Newton had been looking out the window, running his hand up and down Hermann’s leg. Hermann had flinched, and Newton yanked his hand away, glancing at him.

“Sorry.”

“ _[Es macht nichts](It's%20nothing),_ ” Hermann replied casually.

Newton stared at Hermann’s thigh, and ventured to put his hand back, still staring, and massage it lightly. Even though it was dark and Hermann was looking away, Newton saw the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile, and Hermann's whole body relaxed a little.

“Does it ever stop hurting?”

At the question, Hermann tensed, and Newton wondered why the hell he couldn’t keep his own mouth shut. Hermann looked at him sharply and bopped him lightly on the forehead with the head of his cane. Newton cried out and clasped his head.

“Does that?”

Newton shut up and rubbed his head and tried to shake the pain away, and stared back out the window. He felt Hermann take his hand and put it back on his thigh, keeping it in place tenderly with his own. But something about Newt’s own words hovered in the air around them. Newton swore he had heard the question somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place it.

The one night he was invited back to Hermann’s quarters, he had to remind him that he needed to be up at three in the morning and again at six to collect data sets, but Hermann was undeterred.

To Newton’s eyes, Hermann’s room seemed stark: bookshelves organized neatly (and upon closer inspection, alphabetically, with a small pile of Ian Fleming crushed into a corner), with barely anything on the table surfaces. But he was soon reminded that comparing Hermann’s living space with his similarly immaculate workspace was not the reason he was there. Hermann pulled him onto his lap and they lost themselves in a kiss that they didn’t need to worry about anyone walking in on.

They took their time, fooled around, rubbed against each other through their pants, not able to get much further with the narrowness of the cot and the awkwardness of Hermann’s hip, but they found a way to lie together, simply basking in each other’s warmth, and dozed off.

It wasn’t until he was pipetting in the lab at quarter after three, music turned up too loud, that Newton realized Hermann had planned the invitation that way. Newton put his head down on his desk and closed his eyes, and when he opened them a moment later, it was already six.

They spent more and more time together, on and off the clock, until they became a team within a team. When Hidoi struck Bangkok and Newton was called to the Hong Kong ‘dome, Hermann somehow finagled the Tokyo Marshal into letting him go, too.


	8. Chapter 8

When he graduated early, at the age of fifteen with, as his aunt joked, only his glasses prescription outstripping his IQ, and scholarships and letters of invitation came from institutions across the country, Newton jumped at MIT. Two years later, for his Convocation, his parents came out to visit him, and even his aunt flew up from Pennsylvania. When he found out they were the only ones coming, he breathed a sigh of relief. When MIT offered him a scholarship for his grad work, he took it without a second thought. When it came to his Ph.D., he hadn’t meant to start an academic bidding war over himself, but when Berkeley had sent him the first letter, he tore it up having barely glanced at it; he wouldn’t go home. Not discouraged by his refusal, and even his firm acceptance of MIT’s continually higher counteroffers (he wasn't looking for it, but it was nice to feel wanted) Berkeley continued to send him a new proposal every semester. It got to the point where he would shred the envelopes without even opening them, shaking as he did so. When he accepted a guest lecturer position for the 2013 spring and summer semesters at the evolutionary biology department in Chicago, news got back to him that Berkeley was fuming - but it didn’t stop them from sending their students to work under him.

And it was _that_ Saturday, pints in hand, sitting around the Pub’s thick wooden tables in the basement of the Ida Noyes building with his students, some of whom were even slightly older than he was, that the news came in. Somebody joked at first, drunkenly trying to count on their fingers, that CNN was about five months too late for April Fool’s day, and that it wasn’t even the first, and it was way past noon, anyway (to which their more sober friend asked with a chuckle if they were sure). A group of fine arts majors in the corner shouted obscenities about the poor costuming job and the scale being way off; someone shouted to call the national guard; another, in their best Orson Welles impression, offered up: _“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed!”_ and everyone laughed. A cheer went up when the unbelievable godzilla sliced through the Golden Gate Bridge, and someone even yelled that they’d seen better. And then the tables started vibrating. Phone after phone went off around the bar, and the mocking turned to confusion, and then to ripples of panic. His own phone lit up in front of him, and he deciphered the last message he would get for the next twenty-four hours as the wireless carriers backed-up:

_Dad (mobile)_

_Mom und me still ok told stay put into further notice alread messages you aunt Gunnar missing love you[vatti](dad%20\(Germ.\))_

And for the next several hours everyone watched in silence, in awe, in terror and disbelief as the world changed in front of their eyes. Some people started crying, and others comforted them wordlessly. Nobody said anything, or if they did, it wasn’t the words that were important. At one point, he looked down and saw that one of his students had been holding his hand. He didn’t know her very well, and she didn’t look at him, couldn’t tear her eyes from the television screen, but he didn’t let go. Students trickled in to the bar to watch until it was standing room only. Advisories came for people to stay together if they were able, but remain in their homes, to await further information; to be prepared for evacuation if they could, but please not to be on the roads if at all possible; to keep their televisions or radios on, and keep their phones on but not to call or text anyone unless absolutely necessary. Twitter, facebook, tumblr and just about every social media site went down as too many users flooded them with information. At the two-hour mark, one of the reporters broke down, and people started to go home. Tricia, the bartender, took charge like she did on any crowded night and reiterated what the newscasters were saying as people left - stay together, stay informed. She filled up empty jugs, bottles, containers, whatever she could get her hands on, with water and passed it out to the people leaving, just in case. People left with people they didn’t know but would now never forget. Some people never left; Newton was one of them. He tracked the monster’s progress in his mind’s eye, almost street by street, as it laid waste to San Francisco, and mentally willed it to keep going north, not to turn south, to stay the fuck away from his family. And he tried, tried his best, to avoid all thoughts about his uncle in case in the silence someone heard that most despicable of thoughts that slipped into his mind.

For the next six days he couldn’t remember eating or drinking or sleeping. No one had to say that classes were cancelled, that the semester would end there, with only three weeks to go. It almost seemed as if no one said anything at all, ever.

And then, finally, it was over. And at the same time it carried on and people helped each other and were called heroes and survivors and the nation and the world were in shock and awe and grief and fear.

It was only then that the lists of the missing started coming in, and the lists of the dead were confirmed. Time of death and location of the body placed Gunnar on the Bridge at rush hour, heading home from a meeting across the Bay, among the very first casualties. And his father couldn’t talk to anyone, and his mother barely could, and Newton couldn’t say anything, either. How could he tell them that, just like everyone else in the bar who was watching at that moment, he had _cheered?_

He didn’t want to go home right away - he couldn’t, even if he had wanted to, as the area was still closed off to all but essential air and ground services - but Berkeley had called, and he had known they would almost the second before his phone lit up, picking it up before it even had the chance to ring. It wasn’t permanent or a commitment, they said to open, in case they scared him off again, just a team they were putting together, exclusive access to tissue and fluid samples and special clearance to start bringing people in immediately, and they didn’t have to say it, that there was no one else in the world they would even think of asking, just like any of the other elite few who made up the rest of the team. And he didn’t even have to say yes, because there was no one in their right mind who would have said no.

His mother both loved and hated having him home, because the feeling still lingered that it might happen again, but once he was there her concern faded into the background, and it was her grief he found uncomfortable. He wanted to scold her for taking on what should have belonged to his father and his aunt, should have been weighing _them_ down and wanted to shout at her that they should be feeling this bad, not her, but he said nothing. And every weekend he spent at home she bothered him to go visit his uncle’s grave. And every time he said no, but still drove her to Pajaro Valley, and waited in the car. She said nothing, understanding in some small way that it was different for everyone, but it still broke her heart. And he waited in the hot car, stewing, muttering to himself that the only thing she never asked him was _why_ , but that it didn’t matter because he could never tell her, could never make her blame herself because it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t anybody’s fault but his own, that each of the eighty-seven times it happened that he could have said no and _he never did_. And he rubbed the headache that sprung up behind his left eye to try to calm himself from the moment he saw the movement of her taking the brown scarf off her head from just beyond the trees, to the moment she got in the passenger’s seat and they drove the entire way home in silence, except for whatever radio station she chose mumbling in the background.

And every Monday morning he got to forget all about it, and instead marvel in something completely new, completely alien, and share it with people just like himself, who, in polite company, said nothing about the _kaiju_ , held their tongues when people used words like ‘horror’ and ‘tragedy’ when they wanted to scream things like ‘fantastic’ and ‘discovery’ and shake them because didn’t they know how _amazing_ this was?! And in their spare time, or when they couldn’t sleep, they built different scale models of Trespasser, and littered them along the windowsill, and others started bringing in their own toys, their Godzillas and King Kongs and Optimus Primes and Borg ships and someone even found the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man - and one-by-one Trespasser crushed them all. The lab was abuzz with nervous energy and caffeine and lack of sleep and conversations about did you see this? and what about how that works? and who knew that would do that? and I had no idea and _isn’t this so fucking cool?!?_

And every Saturday morning, his mood darkened with every one of the ninety-four miles, ninety-three miles, ninety-two miles until he pulled into the driveway of his parent’s house and resisted the urge to turn the car around and drive straight back. But his mother always greeted her _bubbala_ with a kiss and a hug so hard that he smiled when he wheezed that she was going to break his ribs. And she fed him, and he ate and mowed the lawn, and ate some more, and he tried to push away the dread at the question his mother would always ask. Except that time, she didn’t.

“You should go see Gunnar.”

Whether it was because his father hadn’t asked him in German, or really hadn’t asked him at all, or because he used his uncle’s name and made him sound almost like a completely different person, or because of the way he said it, his tone relating the words his mouth couldn’t form - _do it for your mother, not me_ \- whatever it was, Newton went. And they let him go alone.

It didn’t take him long to find the piece of flat, black polished marble with the Star of David at the top and GEISZLER engraved in grey into its surface. He didn’t know what to say, or what to feel, and was angry that he felt nothing, and anger was the only thing that stuck but he couldn’t let it out, couldn’t yell, there were other people there, but without a word and with hardly a sound he kicked the slab, hard, in a rage, and kept kicking and kicking until his foot was sore, and then he dropped to his knees and pounded the flat, unforgiving surface with his fists, and yanked the _yarmulke_ out of his hair and tossed it at the stone and vowed he’d never be buried anywhere near here and kept hitting and hitting until he ran out of energy and sat, panting, under the hot sun chilled by the cool breezes, until his ears rang and his eyes started to dot with black, and he forced himself back to the car.

He leaned over the steering wheel staring out at the trees, not wanting to go home, but not knowing where to go. His eyes glanced over to the mini Trespasser model that he had stolen from the lab to keep on the dash for the drives home, and hid under the junk in the glove compartment whenever either of his parents got in the car. And he thought back to the windowsill in the lab with all the toys his colleagues had brought in, and realised he had none of his own. His parents had always bought him books and comics and lab kits and Meccano sets because that was all he ever asked them for. It was his uncle who bought him toys, and he always said he could do what he wanted with them, and he usually took apart anything with gears or electronics, and anything else, whether it was a stuffed animal or plastic figurine, and whether he liked it or he hated it, he had always burned or melted it and then hid it at the bottom of the garbage bin. Nothing was permanent.

And it was at that moment that he dropped the plastic kaiju he had been holding so tightly in his grip that it was leaving marks on his palm, and swiped at his phone to check the savings account that now had nearly $450 with over a decade of accumulated interest, and that, thanks to the real-life kaiju, he would never have to think about checking again.

His first stop before home was a bank. His second stop was a tattoo parlor.


	9. Chapter 9

“Doctors Gottlieb, Geiszler,” the ‘dome ops manager nodded to each of them, “let me show you to your room - you can drop off your things, and I’ll give you a tour of the lab later this evening.”

“Thank you, sir,” Hermann said courteously ignoring Newton’s knotted eyebrows.

“Room?” he whispered furtively as they walked quickly down the hallway, Hermann trying to keep pace with the administrator. “Did she say ‘room’, as in singular?”

Hermann cast him a withering look.

She told them that the mess was in the same place as all the other ‘domes, dinner started at 1900 hours as usual, and they could find her there to show them the lab after they had a chance to rest and unpack.

Newton looked around the room with his hands on his hips, nodding at the empty bookshelf and then sitting down on the large bed.

“How?” was all he could ask with a goofy grin.

“For goodness sake, Newton,” Hermann lectured, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, “all you have to do is fill out application 619-stroke-G, Request for Family Housing.”

Newton’s eyebrows seemed to raise themselves.

“Application request?” he said out loud, while all he could think was that Hermann had called him _family_.

“Seriously,” he scoffed, “it’s as if you’d never filled out a grant application in all your - my God, you never _have_ filled out a grant application in all your life, have you?”

Newton shrugged.

“Isn’t that what undergrads and grad students are for?”

Hermann rolled his eyes, then allowed himself a moment of worry.

“You do like it?” he asked meekly.

“I do, I do!” Newton affirmed. “It was just a bit of a surprise.”

“I knew it,” Hermann chided himself, “I’m sorry, I was too forward, I should have asked first. I can request a change if you’d like your own room, this was stupid of me..”

To stop his agitation, Newton took Hermann by the hand and drew him close.

“It’s a good surprise,” he clarified, rubbing the back of Hermann’s hand with his thumb, staring at it. “It’s nice. Really nice. Well, I mean, for a ‘dome...”

There was something liberating about no longer worrying whether it was his bed or Hermann’s bed because it was theirs. There was a certain sort of peace in not having to worry about unexpected visitors to the lab or whether they should be doing the things they did on a dissection table, or getting shore leave for a weekend and wondering if trying to get a hotel room together would be an issue in whatever city they were in. They had a space to share that was truly their own, together.

They discovered more things about each other - that Hermann strongly preferred having laundry in a basket instead of on the most convenient surface - and came to agreements - that Newton’s nightstand was his own and he could keep it as messy as he liked - and made compromises, and formed routines.

Hermann got used to tracing the outlines of Newton's tattoos when he walked around shirtless, and he got used to Hermann lying on his back on the floor in his striped pyjama bottoms and blue t-shirt with his legs up the wall and his forearm over his eyes. Some nights he would tease him, and some nights he would give him a kiss upside down, and some nights he would just lay down beside him until he got into bed.

Every Sunday morning he would wake up alone when Hermann went to the pool, and would let himself fall asleep again until he was poked awake. Newton would remind him that they had nowhere to be, and would pull him back down into bed to lounge between sleeping and waking.

“You should come to the pool with me,” Hermann suggested.

“Too cold.”

“Or go to the gym while I swim.”

Newton writhed and whined and pulled his pillow over his head.

“I’m just saying it would be good for you,” Hermann continued. “You should elevate your heart rate, increase your metabolism.”

“I thought elevating my heart rate was your job?” he needled him. “Besides, what’s the point when my mother stuffs me with knishes and blintzes whenever I go home?"

"Well, be careful, or SF-19 -"

"Clawhook," Newton corrected him, naming the kaiju that adorned his chest and stomach.

" - will start to sag and look sad."

He squeezed Newton's stomach, and Newton pushed his hand away with force.

"Fuck off," he pouted.

"I’m sorry," Hermann apologized, cradling him again, "I was just teasing. I like the, _[wie sagt man?](how%20do%20you%20say?%20\(Germ.\))_ softness."

They wouldn’t always make it to bed at the same time, if there were experiments to babysit, or ideas that struck in the middle of the night, but even that became a routine. Newton would sometimes crawl into bed at four in the morning exhausted but overstimulated, his brain unable to process why the pH balance of a slice of cornea dissolving in ammonia was going down while in pyridine it was going up, having already accounted for the self-ionization of the water at the low concentrations, but unable to shut off his brain to stop thinking about it. Instead of waking Hermann, he draped his arm over himself, and Hermann half awoke, settling around him, and Newton could finally sleep, their feet and legs just touching.

Their space also gave them the luxury to discover all of each other without hurry, and their intimacy, also, became comfortable. Although Newton was happy with their routine, Hermann often wanted more.

“Why not?” he asked, trailing a finger down Newton’s chest.

“No,” Newton said, shaking his head, but biting his lip as he rubbed up against him.

Hermann squirmed and whined.

“Please?”

“Why is no not enough for you?” he slurred, half in a daze already, enjoying their closeness.

“Because,” Hermann said as if truly pained, “I’m dying to be inside you, I can't help myself.”

Disarmed by how Hermann’s words turned him on in a way he never thought he could be, he tried it, slowly pressing himself down, as much as he could, bit by bit, fully in control, wincing and stopping, but then moving again, sighing as he came undone by the sensation that sent rushes of heat and ecstasy through him. Hermann moaned and jerked up beneath him, triggering a rush of memories and emotions, and he gasped as suddenly his body wasn’t there anymore, it was somewhere else, at a different point in time all together and he pulled away and off him and Hermann was apologising and he was trying to tell him no, no, it wasn’t his fault, but Newton refused to try again, blaming it on pain, and trying to get a handle on his own panic.

He took up a more familiar position, between Hermann’s legs, cleaning him off with a quick dab of the covers before devouring him, back in control, one hand wandering over Hermann's thigh front and back, then over his own cock and tried to make it so that Hermann forgot everything that had just happened, along with everything he had ever known.

He dwelled on what had happened in the lab the next day, and ended up asking Hermann another thoughtless question.

"Newton!" he yelled at him, "I am disabled, I am not broken! Things happen to people just like that, and all the mathematics in the world can’t tell you the reason why. You learn to live with it and you move on!"

Newton sat alone after Hermann's outburst, staring into space. In the silence of his own floating memories, two words jumped up at him _suck and fuck,_ words he hadn’t heard his mind say for a long time. He hated them from the day he had heard them and put together what they meant, drawing the line back to his uncle, but the words assaulted his brain over and over until he wanted to scream. He tried to rub the thoughts away unaware that he had been rubbing Trespasser’s frill on his wrist until he felt the burn on his skin and this time it hadn’t helped because as he stopped the thoughts continued - he was turned gently onto his stomach and his back was being rubbed, lower and lower, then his buttocks.

“ _[Das tut gut, nicht wahr?](It%20feels%20good,%20doesn't%20it?)_ ” his uncle asked, treating him like a living doll. “ _[Sex ist gesund...](Sex%20is%20good%20for%20you)_ ”

...and should feel good and shouldn’t be painful, he said, but it was - it was both - and he forced his mind to be anywhere else and pressed his face into the pillow clenching it so tightly from underneath that when he finally let go his hands were stiff, and when he finally moved off the bed, after he was alone in his room, he found a wet spot that he had left on the sheets, and he got mad at himself for crying as he tried to sop it up with tissues, and laid a face cloth on it, and then another, and grabbed the ridiculous mechanical stuffed hamster that his uncle had placed on the nightstand as a gift, and when he couldn’t crush it in his grip took to undoing the velcro at the back, skinning it, and proceeded to rip each gear and each wire out of its socket.

There were good nights with Hermann, Newton had to keep reminding himself, but it was the conflicts that assailed his memories. Straddling Hermann, kissing him as he dragged his cock up his inner thigh, Hermann trickling his fingertips up and down his back as he moaned.

“Please,” he begged in a whisper, “please let me do it.”

“Do what?” Newton asked, only half aware of anything.

“I just - oh God,” he moaned, “you make me say these things, stoop to such indignity - I just want to suck it, you look so tasty.”

And Newton knew that it had taken nearly every ounce of himself for Hermann to get those words out and they sent a flush of heat from his shoulders to his groin and he bit and tugged at Hermann’s lip before kissing him again and pressing his tongue into his mouth without a second thought.

“I swear I’ll be good - I’ll be nice,” Herman begged.

“No,” was all Newton said.

“You’re so mean to me,” Hermann pleaded with him, arching up with his good hip, eyes half closed and rolling back into his head. “Please...”

“I can’t,” Newton said more firmly.

A lustful grin spread across Hermann’s face to match the darkness of his eyes.

“You’ve not tried...” he purred, and grabbed Newton firmly and playfully by the back of the thighs and tried to pull him up to where he wanted him to be.

In a panic, Newton pinned Hermann’s arms to the bed, sitting up and pulling back and barked at him:

“I said NO! What part of that don’t you understand?!”

And Hermann said nothing and that wasn’t good enough for Newton so he yelled at him some more, whether he made sense or not, he just had to say words.

“Just fuck off! You can stay there cockblocked all night for all I care!”

And he stomped into the bathroom and banged the door shut behind him and leaned over the sink. For a moment he stared at himself in the mirror before shutting his eyes against the body he had been covering up, trying to erase for the last so many years. He splashed some water over his face, and when it wasn’t enough, he stepped into the shower and let the water run over him.

If they had had a couch, he would have taken his towel as a blanket and slept on it, but instead he dragged himself back to bed, staying as close to his edge as was physically possible. He kept his eyes opened because he couldn’t fool himself into sleep with them closed, and listened to Hermann’s steady breathing.

Quietly, still sullen, and not expecting an answer so he could continue to be mad he asked:

“Are you asleep?”

There was a pause, then Hermann answered, “No,” paused again, and added, “I’m sorry.”

The covers rustled as Herman arranged himself, moving close behind him for an embrace.

“It’s fine,” Newton said quietly, wishing he hadn’t fallen apart so dramatically.

Hermann pressed his forehead to his back.

“I just wish you’d let me in.”

“Not funny,” Newton sniggered in spite of himself.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Hermann replied.

“I just - I’m,” Newton faltered, his mind supplying a vicious onslaught of adjectives - _embarrassed - humiliated - ashamed,_ “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We can work on it,” Hermann promised him sleepily.

“Okay,” Newton said out loud, instead of what he was thinking: _No, we can’t._

  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

For a whole year, the world held its breath. New Year’s Day 2023 came and went, and the entire planet braced for the next projected onslaught. As usual, bookmakers gave odds for the exact date, time and place. And, as usual, people decried the practice as being in poor taste, while others placed their bets. Then March came, and the world tensed collectively. March went, then April, and May, and hysteria erupted from the tension. Rioting broke out and, with no experts to turn to, all the political leaders could do was appeal for calm. There was no hope that this could be the end, despite the musings that headlined around the globe, because there was no reason for the break in the pattern. The trepidation subsided somewhat when it was given an unlikely direction through the tabloids, that shouted loudly about conspiracies and cover ups and moon landings and sound stages. Irrationality was something governments could deal with, or at the very least comfortably ignore.

Inside the PPDC, the situation was reversed. Starting the year out with peace gave everyone a respite from a battle they still counted as not over, and a chance to regroup. Sorely needed maintenance went into everything from worn-down Jaegers to overused coffee machines, and the ‘domes buzzed with productivity throughout the summer. Things changed with the seasons, and by September rumours of cutbacks started to circulate and everyone got defensive and suspicious of the other departments' budgets and expenditures.

With a diminishing supply of kaiju tissue, Newton had taken to dissecting and dissolving smaller and smaller and older and older samples just for fun in the hopes that something new might slap him in the face. Hermann grew more and more agitated as his numbers became less and less clear, and data from the breach all but ceased, and he would smear his hand across filled chalkboards and shout that it didn’t make any sense. Newton would yell at him that the kaiju were people not particles and Hermann would jump down his throat because they were _monsters,_ and one of them would inevitably storm off and not come back for hours and sometimes not come home that night only to be found asleep on a desk in the lab the next morning. Tensions built through the day, and dissipated when they laid down next to each other at night, only to start fresh again in the morning.

When the next New Year’s celebrations counted down around the world and still nothing happened, the headlines dared to proclaim the Start of a New Era, finished with questioning, ready to make declarations. People took to the streets, and allowed the edge of uneasiness they had lived with for the last year to melt away, to be replaced by a sense of security, no matter how undeserved it felt.

As if to intentionally pour salt into an open wound, as if they were reading a calendar and planning the best day to continue to terrorize humanity, the kaiju struck Shanghai on the second day of the new year. And the year of respite evaporated as if it had only ever been a childish daydream.

The PPDC was reinvigorated as everyone found their footing again, but quickly started to lose resolve when it seemed that 2024 was going to more than make up for the year that had just passed. Newton was required to travel more frequently, and, as understanding as the commanders had been of letting Hermann accompany him, they both realised the benefits if he stayed in one place. They said goodbye in April, with Hermann heading back to Tokyo, sending Newton off to Vladivostok with his parka, making him promise that he would bring it back as soon as humanly possible.

Newton’s visits to Los Angeles allowed him the chance to reconnect with his parents, who had come to understand the work he was doing even if he saw how the stress of the attacks coming so close and him constantly chasing monsters was taking its toll on them physically. He tried to joke that, luckily, he was the last one on the scene and probably in the least danger, but even he didn’t think it was funny. When, sheepishly, he told them about Hermann, they shrugged and smiled and said they knew there had been something, and that they were happy for him, and hoped that one day they might meet him. His last visit consisted of a week of helping them pack their things, leaving the furniture for whoever would be willing to rent a house so close to the ocean, and sending them off on an early retirement they couldn’t entirely afford, even living with his aunt in Pennsylvania. None of them said goodbye to the house.

It was nearly the end of November before Newton and Hermann saw each other again, in Tokyo. They had stayed in contact daily at the start, then once a week by the summer as they were both overwhelmed with work, and then once every two weeks. Newton draped the parka around Hermann when he met him on the helipad, trying to keep off the sharp winds, burying his face against his neck. They held each other for a long time, silently, oblivious to everything around them.

Over dinner, Newton shared his stories of increasingly empty labs, and they both boggled at the stupidity of diverting funds to a Wall that no one wanted to openly say would probably not even be finished before it was destroyed. Two days later, they were officially notified over e-mail that they were the new heads and composite staff of the K-Sci division. They went to lunch shoreside for a mock celebration.

Not even two weeks after their reunion, circumstances conspired to keep them on edge. Hermann blew up when he couldn’t find a stack of papers that he needed because Newton had forgotten a clipboard on top of them, and complained that he had the organizational and emotional capacity of a twelve-year-old. Blinded by rage, Newton hurled back the most demeaning insults that came to mind, dredged up old arguments, yelled until he was hoarse and tried not to smash things. He would have sacrificed an entire week’s worth of work just to be able to overturn a table full of beakers, but he caught himself short.

Another argument over nothing, and Newton would yell that he wanted a divorce only to be reminded cooly by Hermann that they weren’t married, to which he replied that it would be a lot easier, then.

They weren’t getting much sleep at night, and when word came that the ‘dome was being decommissioned and everything was being relocated to Hong Kong within the week, they spent nearly every minute in the lab packing.

The day before shut-down, Hermann was in a foul mood. When he found a set of Newton’s scalpels in his box of equipment, he tossed across the table, noting nastily that having to live together was enough of a chore, but that having to work together was perdition. Without thinking, Newton grabbed Hermann’s cane that leaned against the table, not knowing what he was going to do with it, just seething. But Hermann glared and chided him casually for verging on being abusive, and shot at him that it was obvious that, despite his questions about his condition, he would never truly understand what it was like living with something that held you back.

Those were the last words that Newton heard before his world went fuzzy and soundless, and he swung the cane over his head and smashed it against the edge of the metal table with a roar that must have issued from his own throat, and it splintered in the middle with a crack. Panting he tossed it at Herman's feet, scowling at the immense shock on his face, and stormed out to pace the hallways until the tingling in his hands stopped.

If he could have chosen, it wouldn’t have been how he would have left Tokyo.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Stress was running high in the Hong Kong ‘dome just days after it had become the last PPDC outpost, and it seemed that at any moment half of the crew was going to snap. Newton was buzzed off the energy, but even more by his own idea that was nearing its real-life genesis. He had become so enthralled by it that he had shared it with Hermann, who had received it with rather less enthusiasm.

“This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had!” Hermann was yelling, pacing about the lab, kicking whatever was in his way to the other side of the room.

Newton held up the pieces of his homemade gadget, talking more to it than to Hermann.

“No, see, that’s where you’re wrong,” he chattered, demonstrating, “it’s actually quite brilliant: these semiconductive diodes acts as a pons, and then to calibrate for the increased frequency in the megahertz range of the kaiju brainwaves, the dampeners offset the - “

“That’s not what I meant!” Hermann interrupted with a thump of his cane. “It is your _worst_ idea to date - and may very well be your last.”

It unnerved Newton that Hermann was expressing what he himself had already thought, and he didn’t want to admit to his nervousness. It also pained him to hear the concern and helplessness in Hermann's voice, when he had a job to do. He stumbled, pointing an accusing finger at him.

“You’re just arguing so you can be right about everything!”

“I’m arguing because I love you!”

“Don’t even try it!” Newton screeched at him, pressing his eyes shut for a moment, trying to pretend he didn’t hear Hermann’s words. “Science hasn’t got anything to do with love!”

Hermann stopped. Newton had never seen him purse his lips so tightly or heard him speak so softly.

“Fine. Do what you like,” he said, and turned on his heel and left.

Newton waited until the door shut before shouting at the silence it left behind:

“Fine, I will!”

Just over an hour later, recorder in his pocket, Newton began detailing his experiment. He left snide comments about being right to Hermann, bragging that he trusted his equipment explicitly and knew it would work, but omitting that he didn’t entirely trust himself to be able to cope with it. He batted away the thought that was trying to form in his head that he might not have cared if he wasn’t.

He swallowed, trying to get rid of the dryness that crept up his throat as he stared at the spongy, yellowish piece of brain floating in its massive glass tank, and pressed down on the red button much harder than he needed to.

It was as if someone had punched him and he fell over and then, without having to get up, found himself standing in a dream. No, sitting. In the seat of a plane, a small child with dark hair next to him, face pressed up against the window - no, him - without moving, himself, sitting with his face pressed up against the window watching Berlin disappear beneath the clouds.

A blink, but he didn’t close his eyes, and now a concert hall, sitting in the dark, hard to see over the heads of the adults in front of him, but still mesmerized by the glow around the pianist on stage as the first chords of Grieg shudder through him, he closes his eyes, there is nothing quite like this.

Blink - opens his eyes, another concert, louder, hazy, still hard to see over the mass of people in front of him, an acrid, intoxicating smell, the music pounding through him. Absolutely nothing like this...

Blink - _Nothing_ like this - shaking, in bed, the door closes, surely his parents know, so why do they leave him alone with his uncle to watch over him, this is the twenty-first time, _what’s wrong with me - why am I keeping count?_

Blink - Keeping count, thirty-four kaiju, be out of a job if they don’t keep coming but how long can this go on, can’t admit it to anyone but it feels like we’re not going to win.

Something new: a mental jerk - no, physical, like he was yanked back by the collar, and something is different, there’s a connection, someone else is here...

A Jaeger has never seemed so small or battered, it’s missing its damned arm why is it not giving up, another blow, another, it’s still standing, arming itself, mission nowhere complete, but we’re not going to win.

Half a blink, now, just narrowing his eyes, and it almost doesn’t seem like his own memory, it’s shaded in blue, but he remembers it, it’s Berkeley and his colleagues lean over the tablet he’s holding with rows and rows of numbers and he’s hoping they’re all bright enough to see it because he’d hate to have to explain that it just doesn’t get any better than this, of course they see it, that’s why they’re here, all of them, the data is just perfect...

And a bit of a mental sway, like he’s pulled to the side and loses his footing slightly, then steadies himself... the data is perfect - the room is glowing blue, it’s not ever been like that, anywhere - we should be pleased with this data, administration should understand, we understand - and the lighting is dimmer than he’s used to but it still gives you a headache after a full day’s work - and the scribbles and dashes on the tablet, moving, look like nothing, mean nothing - no, not nothing, everything: CHz-Cheyta-3 (of 9/8) Incursion (Mark II post-Mesozoic) atmospheric SO2/CO2/NOx ppm mixture just slightly below ideal on average, ideal-to-tolerable where the infestation is highly concentrated - the planet is nearly perfect for colonization. Unfortunately, the clone variant Gamma was unsuccessful with its mission, biomedical engineering needs to produce another Zeta clone, cost be damned, and quickly.

He is surprised by all of this and he knows all of it now, or - no, he always has, we all have, it’s what we’ve been doing for millennia, we’ve just not encountered such difficulties in Phase I since - the symbols on the tablet change; she’s flipped back a page - Glieseyta-5, but we know they can’t all be easy, if only administration wasn’t tiring of that excuse.

And he feels, is convinced, determined that it’s time to stop fooling around, we’ve spent far too much time on this outpost, it should be moving along more quickly, the portal needs to be strengthened to support more and larger forces: we need the extinction phase complete.

 _Shit_.

Another shock shaking his whole body, like just before drifting off into sleep, but this jerk brought him back to the lab, and it was no longer a memory even though the room wouldn’t stop lilting the opposite way from however he tried to move, even with whoever it was trying to keep him from falling, but he could still see the infopad glowing its weird characters across his eyelids whenever he blinked.

It was Hermann holding him up, and Newton clutched at him, trying not to fall over. He felt his nose dripping and was embarrassed, but he was excited. No, disappointed. Or determined? It was difficult to wade through the residual emotions, so he just let them assail him in waves, coming and going.

“It worked!” he croaked, throat hoarse.

“You need some water,” Hermann said, with so much raw concern in his voice that Newton forced himself to turn his head.

“You look so p-p-pale,” he slurred and stuttered, trying to lift a hand to touch Hermann’s face, but finding it heavy as lead.

“I could say the same about you.”

Hermann dragged him to a chair and pressed a glass into his hand and told him to stay and Newton giggled, noticing a piercing pain behind his left eye as he looked down at his white shirt, stained with a mysterious bright drop of red blood, and asked Hermann how he thought he was going to get anywhere, and giggled again when he noticed Hermann wasn’t there, where had he gone? His head was pounding now, not just spinning, his legs tingled so he started to jiggle them and felt better, where had Hermann gone? Why did he leave him there, alone? Was he that angry? Newton gripped the arm of the chair tightly and he swore he was sitting still, but the room kept spinning.

There was a glass in his hand that he didn’t remember getting there, and he stared at it like it wasn’t his hand, it wouldn’t stay still, but he somehow brought the water to his lips and it traced a cool line down his throat and into his stomach. Then suddenly the Marshal was near him, and he wished Hermann would come closer not just stand officiously in the background but, right, this was the ‘dome Marshal, in all his towering, determined calm, so this was probably, like, an official meeting or something.

“I told you it would work,” Newton opened, too excited to think.

Maybe the Marshal wouldn’t notice his flippancy. He rambled off everything he had seen, had learned, about the kaiju, that they weren’t unthinking beasts like they had supposed all along, that these were planned attacks, the portal was controlled, not random, that their task was extermination. The Marshal was the picture of quiet authority, and commanded not people but their respect, so when he asked Newton to drift again and to get him what he needed to do so, Newton was in awe. As soon as the Marshal left, Hermann rushed to his side.

“Didn’t adjust the incoming frequency for the hive mind,” Newton heard himself babbling, “I was off by ten... ten. Ten to the neg-negative three.”

“That’s a thousand time’s magnitude,” Hermann whispered, voice trembling, running a shaky hand over Newton’s damp hair. “You could have killed yourself.”

“I think I wanted to,” Newton mumbled, confused, and was shaken by Hermann.

“Don’t talk nonsense!”

Newton didn’t really know what he had thought and what he had said, he had spent every last bit of energy he had talking to the Marshal and he just needed to rest...

But there were things to do.


	12. Chapter 12

Most of the evening had seemed like a dream to Newton, and, for all his lack of sleep, and having been hunted down for some inexplicable reason by the sort of monster he had pretended to be when he was a kid, he thought he was doing a remarkable job of keeping himself together. And awake.

He was nervously figuring out how to check for a pulse on what he hoped was now the corpse of a newborn kaiju, still sad that it had to go that way despite, or perhaps because of it having swallowed one of the more revolting people he had ever met right in front of his eyes. In the back of his mind he was also mulling over why they would have sent a pregnant kaiju into battle.

There wasn’t much time to think as Hermann arrived with the equipment. It didn’t seem right to plunge a diode into the brain of something that hadn’t been alive for more than a minute, but Newton thought back to having nearly been eaten not minutes before, and plunged the point through the beast’s skull.

If Newton had had more sleep he might have gotten angry or upset that Hermann had volunteered to drift with him, to share the mental burden, as he put it, even though Newton had assured him that the notes he had left about recalibration would take care of the overload. He might have also worried about sharing his thoughts, if he had been more lucid, but all he could do to prevent himself from crying was to kiss Hermann fervently for offering.

And with a shared sense of apprehension they delved into the muted otherworld of thought together.

Now that he was more familiar with the drift, the fall didn’t come as of much of a surprise as it first had, but the sensation lasted longer. He also felt both Hermann’s presence and the kaiju’s, like people in the same room who hadn’t yet seen each other. Memories spun around him - as a child at the Siegessäule looking up at the gold angel haloed by the sun, alighting on the obelisk and asking how high it was and did it ever come down to Earth? - licking sour cream off his fingers on a dark night in early December as his father tries to pass him the candle to light the menorah - finally catching a miniature crab from the grey sand, letting it trot over his fingers as he switches it from hand to hand - staying in at recess because he and his best friend had started punching each other over something one of them had said, and his teacher marking and fuming silently at them from behind her desk...

It seems like forever and he is still falling and it gives him a moment to panic that he hasn’t factored in a newborn alien trying to wrap it's head around its own brief existence trapping him unwittingly into delving into his own childhood against his conscious judgement. He remembers the waves, like standing on a beach, knows that he needs to go with them instead of holding his ground or he’s likely to get sucked under, knows that he needs to experience the feeling to be able to pass through it, to treat each image or taste or smell without curiosity, forget Alice and the White Rabbit, let him run off to wherever he needs to be. And each memory flutters up like cupping a cocoon in your hands and feeling it unfurl into a butterfly, trying not to grab it and crush it and end the link, but opening your palms and watching it test its wings as long as it wants to, until it flies away on its own.

And he lands with a lurch - standing at the back of his classroom, then sitting at one of the desks in the rows - rows? and where are the SMART Boards, even just the whiteboards? - his teachers never had chalk marks around their pants pockets - no, of course they did, Herr Krüger in particular, who is engrossed in conversation with him, leaning back on his desk at the front of the room, _[Bitte, Ruhe!](Quiet,%20please!)_ to the other students, if they would only pay attention, he thinks, maybe they’d catch on instead of sniggering at him, kicking the crutches that lean on the back of his chair to the ground, _[Raus! Jetzt!](Out!%20Now!)_ at least his teacher is on his side, stupid crutches, if he didn’t have them they wouldn’t make fun of him and force him to hide in the nook near the gymnasium over recess because he doesn’t want to get tripped anymore on the playing field, and this loneliness doesn’t matter because who needs imbeciles as friends?

Blinks - even surrounded by people, the loneliness of those first years in college, Cambridge: Massachusetts, cold; England, lush and green - a first kiss (this isn’t his) and thereafter knowing who to smile at, and how, and being as forward with his lovers as he is with his ideas, just a pity that nearly everyone surrounding him still feels like an imbecile.

Wincing as he blinks - jealousy (this is his) and loneliness and complete silence, except the light blaring noiselessly from the lamp, interrupted only by the sound of a zipper and clothes rustling and _he doesn’t want to be here at all._

Groggy, now, blinking, he suddenly sees the scene through Hermann's eyes, his own white, naked body, uninked, pristine, disappearing into the bedsheets, his uncle between his legs, and on instinct turns away in horror, shock, disgust, physical revulsion, wishing he’d never seen it, muttering a prayer he didn’t know _[und mich diese Nacht auch gnädiglich behüten](and%20protect%20me%20tonight,%20by%20Your%20grace)_. He is overwhelmed by the anger and pity, disgust, sorrow - feels it all directed towards him - and still hears his own small whimpering, and, mortified, cowers.

And the yank - this time it feels like a shove - and it’s terrifying but he’s grateful, then suddenly not - mortified to be cowering before the administrator, yelling to pull yourself together, stabilize the portal - they don’t care that it’s already secured to accept only the clones’ DNA patterns so we’re safe on our side, the plan won’t work, can’t work - don’t give us your theories, your shoddy work, your damned excuses, just stabilize the portal! We send the first platoon as soon as we have confirmation from the fireteam that their weapons are neutralized, and we wipe the bastards out!

_The plan won’t work._

The shock, and they fall back to Earth simultaneously. Newton somehow got to his feet, accustomed at least to the spinning, pressing his thumb to his eye, wincing at the headache. It had been too much for Hermann, and he was physically ill, so Newton offered him the handkerchief and sniffed, wiping his bloody nose on his jacket. There wasn’t time, they had to get back, and wove their way through the mess in the street to the chopper where they sat in noise and darkness and silence, letting the images crash over them, helpless to make them stop, their distress tempered only by the resolute panic that their plan wouldn’t work, but it would have to work, and they could help make it work.

_It had worked._

The collective tension in the command centre evaporated, replaced by the noise of a frenetic shared energy that this was over, they were all out of jobs, thank God, this was decisive, not a victory, something more, an end to the struggle, a release. And the jubilation that their soldiers were coming back, already heros, even if no one else in the world knew it yet, was balanced precariously with the sorrow that two of their finest were lost in noble sacrifice.

And in his joy, Hermann held him tightly as Newton picked up on a reverberation between them, something different from their usual closeness, he could feel Hermann’s energy, that he wanted to cry for happiness but wouldn’t let himself in front of all these people. Then the remorse, then anguish over all he had witnessed, diffusing into pity, and Newton knew it was directed at him and was struck by it as if by a blow and thrust Hermann away and fled the room.

There was chaos in the hallways as word spread and whoops went up around corners, and hurrahs, and someone passed him and hugged him, lifting him off the ground, oblivious to his slovenliness, then let him go and assaulted the next person with his elation. Newton couldn’t stand, could barely see, leaned on the wall for support. It had seemed he’d only been there for a moment, but it could have been longer, he might even have fallen asleep and no one noticed, and then Hermann was there, holding him up by the arm, searching his eyes.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” he said, so low that no one else heard, and the pity in his voice rattled him.

“Then let’s not,” Newton seethed. “See, that was easy!”

Newton faltered down the hallway, caught up in his dread at having let Hermann see and remember the only thing he wanted to just forget, and he moved down an empty corridor and Hermann had to catch him to steady him again, but he pushed him away, still feeling the remnants of his thoughts and wanting to be as far away from him as possible. Hermann would not be deterred, so Newton pushed him again, harder, with all the strength he had left, fully aware that he was unsteady on his legs but beyond caring, and Hermann stumbled against the wall and called after him as he ran down the hall and slammed the door to their room and sat, head in his hands, hyperventilating on the edge of the bed, alone for how long he didn’t know, blackness swirling just on the edge of his vision, but then he wasn’t alone and, sitting beside him now, Hermann put a gentle hand on his back, but couldn’t stop himself from trembling.

“What I saw,” Hermann began, even his voice unsteady.

The jolt of Hermann’s horror struck Newton again, and he tensed, feeling like his limbs were going to snap in on themselves, and Hermann drew his hand away.

“You didn’t see anything,” Newton declared, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair, remembering that what Hermann had seen had made him physically sick.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“How the hell do you know what is my fault?!” Newton demanded, tearing his hair out, wishing it would make Hermann leave.

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated simply, and Newton heard tears in his voice and wanted to ask him what right he had.

“It’s not your problem! It doesn’t matter!” he shouted, sitting up, clenching his fists in the air in front of him and willing Hermann to get the hell away from him.

“It matters,” Hermann insisted quietly.

“No!” Newton yelled, shoving a threatening finger in his face, spitting the words back at him, “it’s just the same kind of stupid thing that everyone has gone through and you get over it! Only I’m too _broken_ to be able to do that.”

“It's not the same,” Hermann rasped.

“It _is_ the same,” Newton kept yelling, unable to stop, “you said so yourself - there's no reason - you just deal with it and you move on!”

“It's - it’s not the same,” Hermann said again.

And Newton didn’t know why Hermann kept saying all these stupid things but didn’t want to touch him, even though he knew he couldn't be touched now - dirty, soiled, stained - and wondered how he had ever been touched, and Hermann was right.

“I’m repulsive,” he hissed acidly.

“Newton,” Hermann tried to reassure him, smoothing his hair gently, and now he didn’t want to be touched because he could feel through Hermann, somehow, his sadness and his helplessness and the feeling that he wanted to offer all the solace in the world if he could, and that it still wouldn’t be enough.

“Don’t,” Newton warned.

“ _[Spätzchen](term%20of%20endearment)_...” Hermann cooed.

“ _[Kein Deutsch!!!](No%20German!)_ ” Newton shrieked, clenching his eyes and fists shut, and that was the breaking point. He doubled over on the edge of the bed, still shrieking, and as it mixed with his tears and got into his chest, it turned into a scream and he didn’t care who heard, tears burning through his eyelids, and he sobbed and then screamed again when he’d got his breath back, and again, wishing Hermann would hate him and tell him that this was too much and to stop it already and leave him, and he sobbed when Hermann stayed, and more because this felt like it should be the end but he knew it was just the beginning, and he screamed for the twenty-seven years of sound that he had never made, and sobbed for all those same years he’d never let anyone know, and when he couldn’t scream anymore, and Hermann still held him tightly, he sobbed until he had nothing left, and then he whimpered and coughed because his throat was sore and salty.

And when breathing without gasping or shuddering or sound or tears finally seemed normal again, he laid his head in Hermann’s lap and felt him stroke his hair with a tired hand, but still manage somehow to position what must have been all of Newton’s dead weight into bed, gently pulling off his glasses and his pants and covering him with the blankets, and then with himself.

And Newton was finally grateful that the world hadn’t ended, and slept.


	13. Epilogue

There was no need to stand on the fence to see the ocean anymore, but Newton did it anyway. The sunlight sparkled in the far-off waves, and the shades of blue changed, light to dark and back again, before drawing a bright line at the horizon. His parents let them live in the bungalow rent-free, but Hermann insisted that his salary easily covered both their needs, even with Newton on sabbatical, and they sent his parents just what they would take to supplement their own savings, and help them come back to visit on holidays.

It had seemed like a step backwards to return to his old house, but his therapist had pointed out that it was, in a way, a good place to restart. They had done up his old room as a study, and it became just another place in the house instead of a threat looming in the back of his mind.

After a few weeks of sleeping late and puttering around the empty house and napping, he forced himself, on both Hermann’s and his therapist’s advice, to develop a routine. He perfected making breakfast, and, after dropping Hermann off at work, headed out for errands, his session, then back home. He allowed himself free time, too, but focused mainly on the upkeep of a small vegetable garden in the backyard.

With Hermann’s steadying influence and continual support, he learned to cope with his past. They forged new memories to write over the old ones, like covering up a fading scar that would always be there, but became less noticeable. Soon, the pain started to dull, becoming a sound being made in another room. It would all, he slowly realized, take time.

Thankfully he, and the whole world, now had nothing but time.

 


End file.
